The orchestra is first-rate . . . gorgeous textures, powerfully rhetorical gestures and superb clarity . . . if you want a young man's view of mortality, this can't be bettered.

Record Review /
Richard Morrison,
The Times (London) / 23. February 2013

Dudamel is a talent every bit as special as was the young Simon Rattle, who recorded Mahler's 10th at an even more tender age . . . Dudamel lovingly shapes this vast landscape, bringing to it an affirming view. He keeps everything moving along nicely, at least until those moments of the finale when all energies ebb away and we are left with those halting, bare lines.

Record Review /
Stephen Pettitt,
The Sunday Times (London) / 24. February 2013

The most immediately recognizable qualities of Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Gustavo Dudamel are infectious passion and thrilling spontaneity . . . [on a live recording] these traits are in evidence.

Record Review /
Ronni Reich,
Star Ledger (Newark) / 15. March 2013

It's top drawer Mahler, no half baked affair, but a finished interpretation. One senses that Dudamel knows what he's doing moment by moment as well as over the sprawling long haul. His lyrical phrasing is warm without being overwrought, never stepping out of line. His rhythmic inflection is spirited, energized . . . The strings dig in, too. Since becoming music director four years ago, Dudamel has asked his strings for greater energy and expression in their playing, polish being secondary. In this Mahler 9, they seem to never let up. The brass and woodwinds are thrilling as well, with nary a sign of live performance jitters. The death-drenched outer movements flow wonderfully, their contrasts weighed and balanced . . . The two inner movements -- a lilting scherzo and a Rondo-Burleske marked "very insolent" -- bristle with vim and vinegar.

. . . the great performances of this often convulsive work capture its fierce urgency for life in all its paradoxical glory, the tenuous fragility of our grip, our illusory sense of control, over our own destiny. The slow progression Dudamel mounts in the first movement has an elastic effect, particularly that the zoom-lens of concentrating on individual harmonies and colors indicates how close Mahler's music lies to the next generation of thinkers of the Second Viennese School . . . Dudamel controls the last, luminous adagissimo with a fine-spun, silken filament . . .

Record Review /
Gary Lemco,
Audiophile Audition / 04. April 2013

Dudamel offers a bright, healthy, sunny interpretation, autumnal at times but never wintry, wistful without ever sounding depressed. It's Mahler seen through the lens of "California Dreamin'" . . . The bloom on the Los Angeles Philharmonic's playing is palpable. Mahler has never sounded more beautiful . . . Dudamel's Ninth is more of a splendid blueprint. Did I mention that he's only 32?

Record Review /
David Nice,
BBC Music Magazine (London) / 01. June 2013

Vision is clear, ensemble tight (the virtuoso interplay in the more vertiginous passages of the third movement is striking in its clockwork precision), solo work well characterized (special praise to the solo viola), and balances are superb (I especially like the way inner lines can sear through the textures in the madder onslaughts of the third movement) . . . Dudamel has an unfailing grasp on the music's large-scale architectural unit . . . his focus is especially impressive in the finale . . . which moves with a relentless tread and consistent sense of direction from the opening phrase to the otherworldly hush of the final measures . . . Dudamel's careful attention to articulation firms up the profile of the thematic shards in a way that clarifies its progress, especially in the outer movement. He has a shrewd sense of the music's textures too: While much of the playing is, as I've suggested, brilliantly transparent, he's ready to bring out the music's proto-expressionism by stressing the density of the gnarlier passages. He's got a good appreciation of the Ninth's forward-looking qualities in other areas as well, playing up the sense of fragmentation in the second movement and, more generally, bringing out some of the symphony's weirder colors. Nor is there any lack of charisma: For sheer controlled freneticism, it would be hard to beat his performance of the third movement -- and for sheer orchestral beauty, the closing of the first movement may well bring you to tears . . . an excellent Ninth . . . it offers a kind of illumination that will impress you . . .